Questions for town hall... ask here, I guess?

note to resmods: If you move this topic away from General, I have a special prim katana on my shelf that I will personally stick you with. Kthx.

Note to lindens: assuming you finally post the questions, please migrate the questions asked from here into the "real" topic. Thanks.

Okay. So. This is coming from me, Lordfly, not a representative of any organization I work for, including Secondcast. I'm just trying to pass information along. It might be wrong information, but it's all I have at the moment.

Tomorrow, Thursday night, at 7 PM PST, there's going to be a Town Hall. It will be Philip Linden answering questions.

Big deal, right? Well, this time the format's going to be a little different. The Secondcast.com folks will be streaming the audio town hall directly in-world as it happens. The first half of the town hall will be questions gleamed from here and selected by the Lindens, like normal. The last half will be questions asked by the Podcast hosts (Lordfly Digeridoo, Torrid Midnight, Johnny Ming, Cristiano Midnight, and I think Walker Spaight) that were asked by live aucience members (that means you) and answered on-the-fly by Philip.

Basically, please use this thread here to talk about that/ask questions for the town hall. I have no idea why there isn't a thread already, which is why I'm putting one up early before the Lindens roll into work.

Some quick FAQ questions:

How will this work?
From my understanding, people will congregate in various areas around the grid, with events hosted by Lindens and the Secondcast crew (like me, for instance). The first half will be fairly run-of-the-mill, as town halls go; the questions are filtered through the Linden PR machine, finally given to Philip, and then he answers the juiciest ones. These are the questions asked on the forums.

The second half will be questions asked live by audience members (that's you folks, now), similar to other town halls. The deal is you IM a host of the show, or possibly another Linden (not sure on that), and they ask your question on air for Philip to answer.

The town hall will be streamed live all over the grid, to minimize lag.

Why do audio?
Two reasons. First, the townhall format currently as it stands is unscalable. While it was fine when we had 5000 residents and 50 people at the TH, now we have 160,000 residents and the main town hall is filled to the max with people. It's a lag apocalypse. This is an alternative solution to this, and hopefully it works.

Secondly, Philip is a much more natural speaker than touch-typist. As evidenced at town halls, he can only type like, 20 words a minute. Considering some questions are paragraphs in length, it does them a disservice to answer in one-line text responses. When he's talking, he tends to give much fuller answers, or at the very least much more interesting ones.

But you insensitive clod, I don't want to listen to an audio podcast, I want text!

We will be providing a transcript after the TH, along with a podcast/download of the TH, so people can listen to it on the way to work or whatever. The transcript will be provided for those that want to search through the TH for juicy bits.

And dammit, now I'm late for work. I'll try to update this thread throughout the day and answer questions.

This is a wonderful thing y'all are doing for the world and the community. Three cheers for Secondcast, Philip, the other Lindens and The Central Grid!

Thinking of a question that hasn't been asked and either ignored, or answered with a stream of senseless marketspeak is a challenge though. Good luck, hope it all goes smoothly.

Great idea, but cutting a bit fine on timing isn't it? Like you, I'm suprised this hasn't been announced before now.

Question: Phil, what do you think of the current SL forums situation? Is the ResMod program functioning as Linden Lab desires? What is being done to improve the situation?

Thanks,

-Ghoti

He said quite a lot about the forums on the recent Secondcast interview if you haven't already listened to it.

Concerning the resmod program in the forums, <insert general really pleased comment #31>. <insert random, humourous, unrelated forum story #82>. We are very proud of our volunteers and greatly appreciate their efforts to improve your world, your imagination. <insert standard always refining comment>, so <insert patent email me statement>. Next!

Dear Philip


The edge of the old continent ends abruptly in straight line. Any plans to ever finish it off and make it look more complete?



P.S. Please call.

<insert rude comment> <delete explicative> <wave hammer around madly>

LOL! Okay, forget I asked.

Thanks Moopf, no, I have not listened to the podcast you mentioned. I'll see if I can locate it and listen, then.

-Ghoti

It's on secondcast.com - his interview is in 2 parts (10 and 11) and I forget which part his forum comments were in.

Concerning the edges of continents, <insert general really pleased comment #27>. <insert original idea over coffee story #03>. We are exploring many landmass ideas, such as residents brushing their own hair, in our continuing efforts to improve your world, your imagination. <insert standard always refining comment>, so <insert patent email me statement>. Next!

Thanks LordFly, I hadn't a clue there was a TH. I hadn't even heard of SecondCast before this thread

If you plan on attending the town hall, please leave me an offline IM or post to the messageboard listed below. I will send you a complementary pitchfork and torch! Some of you will be getting spoons as well. I will attempt to make arrangements to attend myself, but might just get stuck at work.

Could LL set up a real bug list please. This would include all reported bugs with state - "Not Reproduceable", "Correct Behavior", "Deferred", "Scheduled", "In Progress", "Fixed", etc.

The current list of outstanding issues is pretty incomplete, and there's no way to know if receiving no response means that it's not a bug or LL just isn't acknowleging it. Not having this means that developers don't know what's already been reported and what expected behavior actually is.

Moved to notices and well wishes.
This thread is a notice about a townhall and thus it's not appropriate for the general forum.

Are you thor about thomething?

My question:

The amount of "Premium" accounts v "Basic" accounts is still very minimal. Do you have any plans to provide more of an incentive to become a full paid member of the SL community, or are you happy with people just leeching off of those who are stupid enough to pay monthly?

Lewis

Concerning the percentage of premium accounts and our plans to enhance their incentives, posting an effective bug list is an issue best expounded by one of our developers; but I'll tell you what I know. <insert general historical comment #119>. <insert itemized security excuse #44>. <insert random improving your world, your imagination comment #02>. <insert patent future information promise #05>. Next!

I think you missed your calling Khamon

<insert standard got answers mixed and out of order apology #01> <insert random while we wait story #18> <insert segue into compelling global marketing diatribe #73>

So - we should address you as LordFly Linden now maybe?

Nah, far from it. They wouldn't want me as corporate mouthpiece, my opinions and temper are too strong.

I'm keenly interested in how this is going to work out; Philip seems a lot more relaxed talking than he is typing. Natural born salesman, I guess. But he IS a geek, so.. I dunno. I'm optimistic.

Odd that the Lindens haven't started a thread yet...

hmm.

Maybe Philip just wants to talk about his cat at this town hall.

Phillip:

Is Linden Labs actively seeking out real-world pancake restaurants to set up a sim focused on the education of pancake making? IHOP island?

Dear Mr. President Linden,

My question is this: "Do you know who I am? If so, Do you remember me? Do you miss me? Do you want me to come back to Second Life?"

Thank You.

Sincerely,
ReallyRick Metropolitan